PORTLAND, Maine — The state high court upheld Thursday the conviction of a Tenants Harbor man who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for the shotgun slaying of a friend.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that then Superior Court Justice Jeffrey Hjelm was correct in denying the request by Andrew J. Kierstead to have statements he made to police after the killing suppressed and not presented to the jury.
Kierstead was sentenced in February 2014 to 45 years in prison for the Sept. 27, 2012 murder of 48-year-old Richard L. Mills outside his home on Far Meadow Lane in Cushing. A jury had convicted him in November 2013.
The justices stated in their Thursday ruling that there was abundant evidence that Kierstead’s mental faculties were not significantly impaired at the time he made the statements in question and therefore his confession was voluntary. Kierstead had shown signs of low-level overdose of acetaminophen and had consumed alcohol but those were not significant enough to make the statements involuntary, the justices concluded.
Assistant District Attorney Leane Zainea had argued for the 45 years, pointing out that Kierstead lured Mills outside the house on the pretense of needing him to look at a mechanical problem with his vehicle. Kierstead then took a loaded 12-gauge shotgun from his truck and shot Mills in the abdomen. He pursued the victim to continue firing four more shots.
Kierstead had claimed that Mills had hooked him on drugs, but Zainea disputed that contention. She said Kierstead used drugs long before he met Mills and had dabbled in drugs as a teen.
Defense attorney Steven Peterson argued, however, that the shooting death was not murder but instead the lesser crime of manslaughter. He said Kierstead was too intoxicated and suffering from years of opiate addiction and — on the day of the shooting — from opiate withdrawal to have formed the intent to kill the man who he claimed had provided him drugs for more than a decade.